What is up guys? I'm Ethan your RealLife English fluency coach
and in today's lesson we are going to talk about six things that you need to do
every day in order to improve your
English communication skills so if you have ever had that feeling
where you're about to get into a conversation and
freeze up or that really what you hear in your head
doesn't come out of your mouth then this lesson is for you!
And really the best part is that you don't need to go live
in an English-speaking country you can create your own immersion experience
wherever you are in the world so I promise you that if
you do these six things every single day you are going to notice
a huge transformation in your ability to confidently
communicate in English.
So let's get into it but quickly before
we do I want to let you know that if you are
new here every week we make new lessons like this one
to help you attain the mindset, the method and the mastery
that you need to go beyond the classroom and live your English.
So if that sounds like something that you want to be able to do it's really
simple, hit that subscribe button and the bell down
below so you don't miss any of our new lessons.
Alright so this first one is really fantastic because it will help you with
all the other five tips that I have for you today.
So all the other five are actually going to be about
different things that you can do to learn and study that will help you
improve daily and one of the easiest way to make
different habits like this effortless is by connecting them to your already
existing daily routines.
Now although there's a lot of different
lessons out there about the same topic of different things that you should do
every day in English I haven't really seen any other teachers
talk about the importance of routines.
Now this is really about your mindset
for learning English, for me personally I really like planning
out my days and my weeks on Google Calendars now if you get in
the habit of planning out your days and your weeks and maybe even your years
it can be a really life-changing thing for you because all
of a sudden you're in control of where your life's going,
you get to design exactly what you want to happen in your life.
I actually use a guide from a website called Live Your Legend which is really
fantastic and it's also free, I will link that down in the description below.
Now I work a lot and so for me this is really essential to be able to fit in
all the important priorities around my work that's things like
exercising, meditating, cooking, doing other things
around the house, studying and currently i'm actually
learning how to sing.
Now you know just like brushing your
teeth or showering learning English should become something that is
non-negotiable, that you do every single day even if
it's just 10 minutes so of course to do this it becomes
really important to know your already existing daily routines.
So basically what i'm going to do to help you figure this out
is to ask you some different questions, now you can just think this in your head
but you might also want to actually get a piece of paper and write it down
because this will really help you to start thinking about your daily planning.
So first off,
All right now that you have that in your
mind or maybe even on paper it's going to help you a lot to think
about how you can fit the next five activities
into your everyday life now as an English learner listening is
essential you need to do it at least
twice as much as you speak
but the great news is is that listening is super convenient to fit in throughout
your day and there's so many different ways to do
it that you're guaranteed to find some way that you love
so definitely one way that maybe you're already doing is learning with music
now of course it's not enough to just listen to music on the radio in English
while you're driving to work you actually need to actively learn why
you're listening to music so of course you need to learn with the
lyrics now i really like Spotify because with most popular music they
show you the lyrics on screen while you're listening
so you probably can't do this in your car but maybe if you take the bus to
work or if you're somewhere else where you're
sitting and can listen at the same time this is a really fantastic way to learn
and then you can test yourself by going to LyricsTraining or downloading the
app on your phone and then of course once you've actually
learned the lyrics of a song then a really fantastic way to kind of
improve your English on the go is to listen to it while you're doing
other things just have it on in the background.
Now the next thing that you could do is listening to the radio or listening to
an audio book and if you're not already you
should definitely give listening to podcasts a try
a really great place to start could be with our own RealLife English podcast
which is a really great way for you to learn with kind of lessons like this
but it's more through informal native conversations between me
and Andrea your other fluency coach and Justin
so you can find that and subscribe on Spotify,
Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio or anywhere else where you listen to podcasts.
So i'll be sure to link that up here and down in the description below.
Anyways this is exactly why we did that exercise at the beginning
because now you can take a look at your schedule and think of what convenient
moments do you have
where you could be listening to things
in English.
So maybe while you're preparing your
breakfast in the morning you could be listening to the news on the radio in English.
you could listen to an audiobook while
you're in your car on the way to work or you could even listen to songs while
you're in the shower and sing along and this is a great way to improve your pronunciation.
So as you can see if you're creative
there's a million and one ways to improve your listening
and it's really convenient so if you do this then you can actually add
hours every day of english listening and really take your skills to the next level.
And by the way a really fantastic way to
build your listening habit and to take your English comprehension
vocabulary pronunciation and confidence to the next level
is with our RealLife Native Immersion course
now in this 41 week course you will learn with episodes of our podcast
and it's really a great way to expose yourself
to native English as it is spoken in the real world.
Plus you get PDF power lessons, vocabulary memorization software,
access to our fluency circle global community and so much more
and you can try for free right now with our Power Learning Week
simply click up here or down description below to learn more and sign up.
And on a final note do things because you enjoy them
don't just go and start listening to the radio in English because i suggested it to you.
If it's not already something you enjoy
doing in your native language because the most probable thing is that
if you start some new habit but you don't really enjoy it then
you're probably going to give up after a short amount of time.
So choose things that you already like doing
and that way you'll have fun,
you'll make it convenient
and you're really going to see a huge impact on your English.
Alright so we have talked about building
routines, we've talked about building different convenient habits
into your day, now let's talk about how you can develop some other habits that
will really help take your English to the next level.
I have a few suggestions for you but then I want you to get kind of creative
and think of other things that you could do.
So my first tip for you is actually journaling,
now various studies have shown the benefits of journaling
for things like reflection stress relief and increased gratitude
now as an English learner if you start doing this in English it's a really
great way to start practicing your writing every single day
and don't worry so much about mistakes most learners think that that might make
their English worse, it will not, really the important thing
to focus on is the actual daily habit of it the
actual practice of writing and one thing that you could
actually try doing is once you've built a habit of this
then go back like two weeks or so and look at the mistakes that you made then
kind of from the lens of what you've learned since
then and you can probably find some mistakes that you've made and correct
them yourself now another really great idea could be
getting a teacher because they can actually correct it for you
and they'll also hold you accountable to maintaining that habit.
Now my recommendation for you to get started with this
is to just start small by writing down three things every day that you're
grateful for, you could do this while you're having
breakfast in the morning or coffee or you could even do this just before bed
but i guarantee if you start doing this after a few days you're going to notice
that you're more positive and happy throughout your entire day.
So the next thing is meditation this is
one of my own personal favorite habits that has made such a huge impact on my
own life, now one benefit of meditation is that it
helps to make you more present now obviously the benefit of this is
that you enjoy every moment more, now of course it won't be all the time
at first it takes a little while to feel the effects of meditation
but if you do actually make a daily practice of this I guarantee
that you're going to notice it's just made a huge difference on your life.
It can also help you to be less reactive now this means you know with people that
you work with or your family members then maybe you won't be so quick to get
angry about things you'll be able to reflect on them more
and see other people's point of view more this is really helpful when you're
learning another language and you're more exposed to people who
have different points of views they're from other different cultural
backgrounds, also different studies have shown that
this helps to reduce stress and of course for you as an English
learner one of the most important benefits
is that it helps to improve your focus so that when you actually study English
you'll get more benefit from it.
Now some of the most successful people
that you can think of swear by meditation
just to give you a few examples Lady Gaga, Will Smith,
Katy Perry and Bill Gates are just a few names of people
who practice meditation every day and rave about the benefits of it.
So if you want to try meditation and feel its benefits then I'll definitely
link a couple resources down below, like two of my favorite apps that have
definitely helped me a lot Inside Timer and Waking Up and the great
thing about both of these is they are guided meditations in English which is
another great way to practice your listening
and finally we actually have an article on our blog explaining to you how
meditation can help your English so go check that out.
Now the other habit that you can try building is chatting using apps like
Whatsapp, Telegram or others and joining different
groups to practice your english now i talked about in the introversion
lesson that i made a couple weeks ago that this is just a really great way for
you to lower the bar and get some confidence communicating.
Now this is really fantastic too because you can just do it during a five-minute
break at work while you're having your coffee
just jump on the app and read some messages and respond and you'll be
getting a little bit of your English practice in.
Now I might be biased but the Fluency Circle community is probably one of the
best places where you can practice your English by chatting
now we have groups on both Facebook and Telegram
and this is included with all of our courses such as the ReaLife Native Immersion course
that i told you about before.
Next our TV series, now if you're like the average person you probably already
watch at least some TV so why not actually practice your
English while you do this now i'm not going to get into too many
tips for you here we can definitely do another video on
that but we already have a fantastic resource
for you to practice your English with TV Series on our
Learn English with TV Series channel here on YouTube
so be sure to check that out.
Now like TV series, if you enjoy reading this is another really great thing that
you can try doing in English of course start out slow maybe pick
something that you have already read in your native language
my first book that I ever read in Spanish was Harry Potter, that's a
fantastic series to get started with if you like them
and be patient recognize that you don't have to understand every single word
as long as you understand the context.
Now i would love to give you some more
tips that have helped me learning language with reading
and if you would like us to make a lesson on that then please give us a
like down below to let me know and then you
can also check out this lesson that I made
about six books that will change your English and your life.
And then the final one is to do things that aren't related to
English learning in English so to give you an example I had a friend
who was a huge fan of Game of Thrones and he
actually really enjoyed participating in different
fan forums talking about different fan theory and this was a great way for him
to connect with natives and other English learners
around something that he's really passionate about.
So get creative,
think about the things that you enjoy doing and research what different
resources are out there where are people talking about this
thing and be sure to check out our Instagram because we give you more tips
like this over there.
Alright so if you are really committed
to reaching the really advanced levels of English
then it's not always going to necessarily be fun actually maybe if
you're a bit of a geek like me you will actually find it fun so you
actually need to spend some deliberate study time every single
day in English.
Now what does deliberate mean?
Deliberate means doing things that challenge you to practice certain details that help to
sharpen your skills now if you're serious you must do this
every single day even if it's just 10 minutes with your
breakfast so let me give you some examples of different things that you
could do so you could actually do some exercises
in a good grammar book, I'll actually link one of
my favorites down below.
So another really great thing you can do
is drill exercises now drilling is repeating the same thing
over and over again and this can maybe be a little bit more boring but it is
very effective so you can do this with pronunciation
one way that helps with this is by practicing minimal pairs
and a minimal pair is two words that are the same except for one vowel sound
so for example one of the most common examples is ship
and sheep now i'll link a website that actually can help you to practice with
these you can also drill with different
youtube videos that focus on pronunciation
or you could try tongue twisters which is a more fun way to do it
another really great thing that you can do is learn the International Phonetic Alphabet
now this will help you learn every
single sound that exists in English and this is important because many of
those sounds might not exist in your native language
now I highly recommend that you actually record and listen to yourself
because you might actually be able to hear a lot of your own errors
and of course it can be really beneficial to watch videos on YouTube
just like this one but it is only deliberate if you
actually take notes and then you actually apply what you
learned from that video now if you're watching TV or reading books in English
one thing that you can do is actually take note of the new vocabulary and
expressions that you're learning and then the next day during your
deliberate study time you can look up the definitions and do not just
translate these actually look up the definitions in an English
dictionary and then add them to a vocabulary memorization software like
Anki and then you can actually practice these
or you could also write example sentences of these or if you are picking
up a journaling habit then why not try using these new
vocabulary or expressions in your journal
so of course I'm sure you're learning English because you actually want to
speak it so you should actually try to practice this every single day.
Now you don't need to go live in an English-speaking country you can find
ways that you can do this in your own city you have to be creative
now you have to be open to opportunities to speak wherever possible
whether it's by skype or in person so you can consider you know joining the
comments down below and meeting people there
or over on our Instagram you could also be looking for opportunities like this
in person maybe you could go stay in a hostel if you're in a touristic city
and you can meet foreigners this way and start talking with them
another really great solution is by joining Facebook groups now I don't just
mean joining Facebook groups for English
learners actually look for Facebook groups around things that you're
passionate about about your deepest interests now one
thing that I'm actually doing right now is I'm looking into adopting a dog
so i've been joining different dog groups on Facebook
and this has been a really great way to meet other dog lovers
and to practice my vocabulary around dogs in Spanish
and as I mentioned before we have our Fluency Circle community where you have
learners from all around the world who are dying to speak with you
now if you don't have anyone else to speak with one day then
the best thing that you can do is speak to yourself and when you do this again I
highly recommend that you actually record yourself
and listen back and correct your mistakes now it can be really useful to
actually pick different topics because it will kind of build your
abilities to talk about that and then actually when you get to speak with
someone it will come really easily to you.
So this is a great way to start thinking in English as well so a couple tips for
how you could do this is for example if you like reading the news then maybe
look for a news story that interests you and talk about that just as if you were
talking to another person or an article about something else
or after you finish this video for example why not record yourself talking
about what you just learned and this is also going to have the other benefit
of really grilling this information in your brain all right are you ready we
are down to the final habit so this is all about getting accountability.
Now if someone holds you accountable it
basically means that that person makes sure that you're going to do
what you committed to doing, now certainly one of the simplest ways to do
this is by having a teacher or coach or tutor
or language exchange partner who makes sure that you're going to show
up to class or to that skype session that you have talked about
now it doesn't necessarily need to be this though if you have someone close
that you live with or that you see every single
day like your husband or wife your child or maybe someone you work with then you
can have them hold you accountable so a really great tip that I just heard
on podcast is getting an accountability partner
and actually sending that person a message every morning telling them what
you're going to do, so for example for your English you
could tell that person what you're going to do for your deliberate study time
and then at the end of the day you write them again and you tell them what you
actually did so you could do the same for them and then that way you're
helping each other grow all right so finally maybe you need to
raise the stakes a little bit to give yourself that
extra push to do that thing so basically what you would do
is set up something that if you don't do the thing you're supposed to do
you have to do something else that you really do not want to do
so probably the easiest thing would be using money so for example you could
tell some friend every day that I don't do my deliberate
studying in English I will pay you twenty dollars and you
can bet that that friend is going to check in every single day to make sure
that you are studying and you're probably not going to want to
miss that time more than once or twice but it doesn't necessarily have to do
with money maybe if you don't have a lot of it
you could choose something else so for example say
that your husband takes out the trash every single day
now you could tell your husband any day that I don't do my deliberate study
I'm going to take out the trash for the next week and i'm sure your husband will
also check with you to make sure that you're doing your
study every day as he's probably not going to want to take out the trash either.
or you could actually take away
something that you really enjoy so for example if you really look
forward every day to watching TV after work then you could say well if I
don't do my studying in the morning then i do not get to watch TV at night
now you can get really creative with your own solution but basically the idea
of this is to choose something that's going to make sure that if you go
to bed at 10 p.m and it's 9 30 p.m and you have not yet done that thing
that you're really committed to doing that you are going to be sure to do it
before going to bed because you do not want to suffer the consequences.
All right so that is all of the habits that I have for you
but I want to remind you again to take a look at your schedule,
to plan some convenient things that you can do to improve your listening,
to develop some new fun habits to get at least
10 minutes of deliberate study time per day and
of course to speak whenever you can and find the people who can hold you
accountable but also just a warning to pace yourself
because generally people get really excited about trying something new
they try to take on everything at once and when you do this you will probably
just end up getting burnt out and giving up
so i want to hear from you comment down below and let me know
which of these new habits is the most useful for you and which one are you
going to try.
Now it's time to go beyond the classroom
and live your English, awww yeah!
Hey everyone, I'm Andrea your RealLife English
fluency coach and today's lesson is really going to
help you with those pains you have about learning English.
I'm going to give you the best tips and tricks that you can start
learning and using so that you can speak English
faster but also understand natives better even
when we speak fast.